NJ cat advocates leap at trap-and-release legislation

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Gary Meyer poses for a photo Thursday at his office in Millville. Meyer is the volunteer coordinator for a program Millville started in August 2012 to trap wild cats for medical treatment and then return to the outdoors. He operates a registered cat "colony" at his business on Columbia Avenue in Millville. This cat also is recuperating from being shot recently.(Photo: Jose F. Moreno/Staff Photographer)Buy Photo

MILLVILLE - Imagine every municipality in New Jersey having a program to trap wild cats and return them to the outdoors after spaying or neutering them and giving the cats vaccinations against common feline diseases.

It’s easy if you try. Ask Gary Meyer.

Meyer is the volunteer coordinator of the city of Millville’s trap, neuter, vaccinate, and return cat “colony” program. One aspect of the “TNVR” program was it legitimized residents, on their own, looking after registered “colonies” of vaccinated, spayed, and neutered feral cats.

Last Saturday, Meyer headed a three-hour discussion at the People For Animals clinic in Robbinsville. The sit-down was to float an idea for state legislation to require every municipality to set up some version of a trap-and-release program. Currently in New Jersey, TNVR advocates have to make their case community by community.

The dozen-plus people attending the Robbinsville meeting were from animal rights organizations around the state, some as large as the Humane Society of the United States and the N.J. Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and some as small as the Animal Friends Foundation in Vineland.

“Why fight town by town by town?” Meyer said, describing his pitch to other advocates. “You don’t have to be Sun Tzu to figure this out. Just freaking do it.”

Meyer said the process of writing a draft legislative measure is just starting but exactly how to implement a program likely would be left to individual municipalities. He believes New Jersey would be the first state to take this approach.

“But we’re all looking for the same thing,” he said. “We’re looking to have less cats on the streets. It’s less complaints. Neighbors are happier. And ultimately, it’s costing less tax money.”

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Businessman Gary Meyer interacts with one of the stray cats that live at his business on Columbia Avenue in Millville. Meyer, a Merchantville resident, is the volunteer coordinator of a program Millville has had since August 2012 to trap stray or feral cats for medical treatment and then return to their outdoor locations.(Photo: Jose F. Moreno/Staff Photographer)

The reasons the trap-and-release programs get support are several, not least of which is the unpleasant and costly job of killing cats. Advocates also say that experience shows that returning TNVR cats to the outdoors actually is the best way to control wild populations.

The Millville trap-and-release program for cats was the first one in Cumberland County when it started more than four years ago. It overcame, with a big push from then-Mayor Tim Shannon, more than a little skepticism to the idea of caring for wild cats rather than trying to eradicate them.

Meyer is about a year into the Millville coordinator role and, frankly, frustrated the concept isn’t in even wider use here. A resident of Merchantville, he owns an electronic equipment repair business in an old industrial building on Columbia Avenue here that also has a cat colony registered by him.

Millville, he said, paid more than $22,000 to the Cumberland County SPCA shelter in Vineland last year, mostly to euthanize stray cats at $70 each.

“Simply put, this has not worked due to what is known as the ‘vacuum effect’ and is why TNVR is a much more progressive, humane, and financially responsible solution to cat overpopulation,” Meyer said.

The vacuum effect refers to the phenomenon of feral cats filtering into an area, once its original cat population was removed, to take advantage of food and shelter that had attracted the original cat population.

“We have a `catch-and-kill’ policy,” he said. “The cats that go from Millville to the SPCA? Less than 1 percent are reclaimed. And that’s real data. … They go to what’s called the `wild room’ and they’re euthanized after a week. They call it `euthanized.’ I call it `needless murder.’”

Ric Kuhns represented Animal Friends Foundation at the Dec. 10 meeting. He’s the operations director for the foundation, which was active in the start of Millville’s program in 2012 and in Vineland passing an ordinance later the same year.

“I think it was probably the most powerful meeting that I’ve been to myself in dealing with advocacy as far as feral cats,” said Kuhns, who preceded Meyer as Millville’s coordinator. “What was different about it was the different agencies (usually) approach it on their own. This meeting was like a unified front of all the agencies.”

According to Meyer, the Humane Society of the United States and People For Animals will work on writing legal proposals for New Jersey legislators to consider.

Other organizations at the Dec. 10 meeting included the Burlington County Animal Alliance, Friends of Burlington County Animal Shelter, Animal Protection League of New Jersey and Companion Animal Trust.